This is a set of two improv-style activites that encourage participants to participate in learning about living and nonliving things. Learners will get to know each other through an icebreaker activity and state their ideas and previous experience...(View More) with living versus nonliving things. This will help prepare them to explore how scientists define and look for life in worlds beyond our own. It also includes specific tips for effectively engaging girls in STEM. This is the icebreaker activity in Explore: Life on Mars? that was developed specifically for use in libraries.(View Less)

Learners select from a variety of fruits to construct a scale model of the Moon, Earth, and Sun. After determining the correct sizes and distances for their models, they remove the Moon. They consider what it would be like if the nearby Moon were no...(View More) longer reflecting the Sun’s light in the nighttime or daytime sky. This activity is part of Explore! Marvel Moon.(View Less)

This activity introduces the importance of meteorites to the understanding of the origin of the Solar System. Learners will use a key to determine if samples are meteorites. Finding meteorites can be difficult because most meteorites look like Earth...(View More) rocks to the casual or untrained eye. Even to the trained eye, recognizing meteorites can be difficult. Since scientists believe that some meteorites are pieces of the asteroid Vesta, they may be very old remnants of the solar system in its earliest stages. This activity provides information and insight that allows participants to share scientists' expectations, based on meteoritic samples, of what we will find when the NASA's Dawn Mission visits Vesta and Ceres.(View Less)